


Socks and Coffee

by tall_wolf_of_tarth



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Knitting, yarn shops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:35:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28423305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tall_wolf_of_tarth/pseuds/tall_wolf_of_tarth
Summary: 5 times Brienne-the-ultra-honest lied to Jaime, and 1 time she told the truth. - Prompted by gypsyscarfwoman at Tumblr
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 38
Kudos: 105





	Socks and Coffee

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gypsyscarfwoman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gypsyscarfwoman/gifts).



> It might be useful to know what a spoonerism is but you can ignore the fancy words as (almost) all the jokes will be explained.  
> "A spoonerism (noun) is the transposition of the sounds of words (typically the initial sounds), usually by accident."
> 
> Notable example:  
> "The most famous, because it was both plausible and hilariously funny, was that in a toast to Queen Victoria, Spooner—instead of raising his glass with the words “Three cheers for our dear old queen!”—invited those present to give “Three cheers for our queer old dean!”"

i. Yarn shop

“Yarn shop, Jaime?” Addam sighs to the phone like he does when he thinks that Jaime has done something particularly stupid. “You bought a yarn shop? In Flea Bottom?”

“In my defense, Addam,” Jaime tries to explain to his best mate, “I thought it would be a coffee shop.”

Addam groans, sighs, and groans again. Jaime waits patiently for him to catch up with his emotions. Honestly, Jaime himself had the same reaction when he realised that the business he bought only _used_ to be a coffee shop, but now sells colourful and fluffy yarn and all sorts of tools related to that like pointy needles, needles with hooks on one end and things that look like gummy bears but have holes in their butts. “And why would you buy a coffee shop, Jaime?” Addam asks, with a voice he probably thinks that is patient but definitely is not.

The tall, freckled employee that came with the yarn shop side-eyes Jaime for fiddling with her wares -- which are Jaime’s wares now and he should be free to play with them -- so Jaime moves to another room which contains a big table with many chairs. There are baskets full of fluffy white yarn on the window, held by snowmen made out of more white, fluffy yarn.

There are many reasons why Jaime bought a coffee shop. The rather big one is to finally remove himself from his father’s influence, but he tells Addam the other.

“I thought it would be romantic. You know, in a modern pastoral kind of way.”

Addam groans again on the phone. “I can’t deal with this right now, Jaime, I need to actually work and not just play around. I’ll call you back later, ok?” He disconnects the call and Jaime looks around at the room. There’s an ancient coffee machine in the corner and a comfortable-looking sofa under the window. This room actually looks a little like a coffee shop; there’s even a separate door from the street. An idea forms in his head.

He finds his employee crouching and putting yarn balls on the bottom shelf. The yarn is multi-coloured -- bright reds, yellows, blues and greens alternating after each other in long string wound into something not-quite like a ball. It looks like a clown barfed it, but in a woolly sort of way.

“Miss Tarth, right?” he calls his employee and watches the woman unfold herself. She rises like a sun from the horizon. She rises higher, higher and even higher until she is above everything and everyone, her blue eyes shining down on Jaime.

“Yes, Mr Lannister?” Miss Tarth has a low voice with a soft accent that Jaime can’t quite place.

“I was thinking that we could convert the back room to a coffee shop, what do you think about the idea?”

Miss Tarth turns her blue eyes away from Jaime back to the clown barf yarn she holds in her hands. She turns the ball around, straightens the label carefully. She then crouches down again and starts loading the shelf again.

“I’m sure it’s a wonderful idea, Mr Lannister,” she says. Her neck goes all red.

ii. Coffee shop

Jaime has actually never worked in a coffee place, but his cousin Cleos has worked in many. Together with him Jaime starts converting the unused back room to a coffee shop. In order to open a coffee shop, Jaime knows, you need coffee cups (both real and cardboard), muffins and other foodstuffs, and good coffee. According to Cleos, though, you also need about twelve types of milk, fifty kinds of syrup, even more varieties of coffee bean, and a whole bunch of other supplies before you can open a truly functional shop.

“And you’re going to need someone to work in the mornings, coz.” Cleos’s eyelashes flutter nervously.

“Brienne,” Jaime brings a cup of coffee that has at least three kinds of syrup, some exotic almond milk and a cinnamon stick sticking out of it to the counter in the yarn shop. Brienne Tarth eyes the cup with suspicion and puts down her knitting, a soft-looking patch of something in light blue yarn. “You wouldn't mind starting a couple hours earlier in the mornings, would you? Just helping at the till, I’ll make the coffee myself.”

Brienne’s hands twitch a little and her little ball of yarn rolls down from the table. She bends down to pick it up. When she comes back up, she busies herself moving things far away from the coffee cup. She doesn’t look at Jaime when she finally replies.

“Of course not, Mr Lannister.”

“Jaime,” he says. “My name is Jaime.”

Socks and Coffee

Brienne looks at the new logo at the coffee cups. Their early mornings have started out well enough, and first customers trickle in. They are mostly businessmen and students living nearby, grabbing a quick coffee before rushing into the morning crowds in public transport. “Socks and Coffee,” she says, and the last word comes out a little higher than the first. “Did you come up with it yourself?” She looks at Jaime, wide-eyed. Her eyes are very blue and very big.

“No, my brother suggested it. I mean, it’s descriptive, isn’t it? We sell both sock yarn, and coffee, right?”

The corner of Brienne’s left eye starts to twitch.

“Do you like the name, Brienne?”

She turns back at Jaime, hands twisting around the empty coffee cup.

“Thenameisverynicejaime,” she squeaks and runs to the yarn shop.

Jaime is left blinking after her, until Cleos and Tyrion come through the coffee shop door.

“I like the logo, coz,” Cleos puts on an apron and takes over the till.

“So, where’s Sophie?” Tyrion asks Jaime with a devious smile when he gets his first “Socks and Coffee” beverage under his nose. Jaime displays the logo proudly. It incorporates a half-knitted sock and some coffee beans. The yarn swirls around the logo in intricate ways.

It takes Jaime for a moment before he gets it. When he gets it, he lets out a string of obscenities that make Cleos squeak and at least two patrons hurry out of the shop.

“Cousin, your courtesies,” Cleos pleads.

When Jaime later calls Addam to complain about Tyrion, his friend laughs at least two minutes without drawing any breath until he wheezes to the phone. “Socks and Coffee, Jaime… you mean… like… Cocks...A-and Sophie…”

In the background Jaime hears Tyrion explaining to Cleos what spoonerisms are.

“Your jokes are lame, brother,” he shouts over his shoulder.

“The joke was that you spent 3000 dragons on the logo and even didn’t see the cock on it.”

Jaime looks at the logo on the coffee cup. The yarn swirling around the coffee beans forms an artful cock.

“Tucking Fyrion,” Jaime curses.

iii. The customers

“Why are your customers so much nicer than mine?” Jaime complains to Brienne after a woman who complained about the selection of locally sourced vegan milk options. “I mean, how many oat milk farms are here in King’s Landing?”

Brienne doesn’t reply and keeps wiping the counter. She looks nervously at a woman holding a sticky-looking cinnamon roll and a coffee cup going into the yarn shop.

Some sort of unease starts crawling into Jaime’s belly when Brienne runs after her. Jaime goes to the door connecting the shops to spy.

“My niece knits,” the woman talks with the second most annoying voice in the world (the first being Cersei’s when she is hungover in the mornings). “I want to gift her some yarn for Sevenmas, so she can knit me a sweater. One like hers,” she points her cinnamon roll to Jaime’s other yarn-shop employee, Ygritte. Ygritte is wearing a Skagos-isle sweater with at least seven colours. The redhead takes one look at the cinnamon roll lady and disappears to the back room. Brienne takes the customer to a shelf full of thin-looking yarn.

“This is our selection of fingering-weight wool,” she starts explaining but the woman starts complaining again.

“I can’t believe you use wool. Don’t you think about the poor lambs? Do you have any vegan wool?” the woman asks while her double-cream oat milk latte sloshes to the floor.

“We don’t actually slaughter the sheep to extract the wool,” Brienne explains with a tight voice. “Sheep are shaved, which is like a haircut for humans.”

The woman with the coffee holds her cinnamon roll in her teeth while squeezing a white yarn from a different shelf with her sticky hand. _‘Cashmere’_ , the label reads.

“What about mulesing?” she says after dropping the yarn into a nearby discount bin.

“All our lambswool comes from Tarth, and Tarth sheep are 100% mulesing free. Mulesing is practised more in warmer climates, and not all sheep farmers do that.”

“But the poor lambs are so stressed when they are shaved! What I want is 100% cruelty free yarn from animals that are treated with respect.”

Jaime thinks that maybe poor knitting shop employees also deserve some respect from the customers.

Brienne takes the woman to another shelf.

“Acrylic yarn is 100% vegan and cruelty free.”

“Are you _sure_ that poor lambs in Acrylia are not tortured while producing this wool?”

Brienne goes very red in the face. Jaime, who has known her for a month now, has never seen her lose control. To her credit, she doesn’t this time either.

“We at Socks and Coffee personally make sure that the wool from Acrylia is only combed from the lambs, and not shaven.”

The woman chooses two small skeins of yarn from Acrylia and makes Brienne gift-wrap them before finally leaving.

“That’s why I hate working at coffee shops,” says Cleos while he wipes the coffee stains from the floor. “The customers are the worst.”

Jaime looks towards the sofa where he hears Brienne explaining to someone how to knit a Tarth braid. Her soft Stormlands accent is soothing and calm.

“Hey, Brienne,” he seeks her out later. “Would you knit _me_ a sweater? The blue kind that you wore last week.”

“Of course,” Brienne shrugs. Jaime perks up.

“The waiting time is about two years though.” Brienne turns away and starts to wind yarn.

iv. The knitters

“I like the knitting shop better,” Jaime texts to Addam. “It’s so cosy and warm here.”

Once again Jaime has escaped from all those “venti upside-down half-caf breve cappuccino” orders to the yarn store side of his establishment and left Cleos alone to manage the coffee shop. He is sitting on the big and comfy sofa that used to be in the room that the knitting shop employees call the classroom and the coffee shop employees call the coffee shop. The sofa has been squeezed between the shelves that contain hugely expensive hand-dyed indie yarn and hugely expensive knitting bags made by local quilting artists.

The knitting shop is warm and cosy but the truth is that it's so much easier to bump into Brienne here. Jaime isn’t sure why he keeps seeking out his tall and freckled employee who wears a “Socks and Coffee” t-shirt that’s too tight around her shoulders and a hand-knit shawl conveniently draped over the part where the logo swirls into a penis. It’s surely not because Brienne is pleasant company, as the woman never talks to Jaime -- only looks at him with her big blue eyes blinking.

“Or maybe you have a crush on your tall and freckled employee. You should ask her out.” Addam texts back.

“I don’t have a crush on Brienne” he texts back and picks up a ball of mohair yarn that someone has dropped on the floor. _‘VARGO’_ , the label reads.

“Have you asked the pillock about the classes?” Jaime hears Ygritte whispering to Brienne behind one of the shelves.

Jaime hears Brienne whispering back, but can’t make out her response. What classes? Jaime’s sure that Brienne has already graduated, even though she’s much younger than him. Maybe she’s taking evening classes and needs extra time off.

It turns out that Brienne _gives_ classes. Knitting classes. At Jaime’s yarn shop. Knitting classes that apparently bring in a fairly large amount of money to his yarn shop. Knitting classes that she used to give in the room where the coffee shop is currently.

“I mean, smaller classes I can teach on the sofa, but the larger groups need more space,” she explains to Jaime. Her blue eyes blink and she is biting her lip nervously. Suddenly it feels really important for Jaime that Brienne can teach her classes.

“What if we push the tables together in the cafe? Would that work?” Having her in the cafe is nice, she can bring her soft lilting voice and her calm manner to the cafe. Jaime would like that. The businessmen buying Jaime’s coffee are always very cranky.

She still chews her lip. “Will you close the cafe for other customers?”

Jaime feels his face going into a frown. The income from the coffee shop is not as great as he hoped it would be. Hiring a new guy, Peck, to help with the morning rush was an additional expense.

“Would you mind terribly if I didn’t, Brienne?” he asks. Brienne stares at him with her big blue eyes. Jaime feels like he’s drowning in that particular shade of blue. Then Cleos drops a coffee cup to the floor with a great clatter and Brienne turns away with a frown. Jaime’s cousin's clumsiness frustrates everyone.

“I’m sure it will be fine, Jaime.” She hurries away to ring up a basket full of yarns for two men in the knitting shop.

“Love the shop name, darling,” one of them says to Brienne and winks at her. Brienne blushes. Jaime feels his blood boiling.

“Of course you would, Ren,” the other man wrinkles his nose and shakes his curls. “You like… Socks…”

“So, are you Sophie?” Ren asks Brienne, and Jaime hears the other guy snickering.

“No, I’m Brienne,” Brienne responds with a voice of a person who has said the same thing many times before.

Jaime lingers nearby until the men leave, making sure that they don’t harass his employees more. They don't; instead, Ren signs up for Brienne’s sock knitting class next month.

The class for beginners, the one she will have in the cafe, is planned for tomorrow, but for some reason Jaime can’t fathom it’s not full. Brienne is now helping another customer, a tall redhead girl who came up to pick yarn for her aunt's Skagos-isle sweater. When Brienne demonstrates to the girl how to do a twisted cast-on, guiding the girl’s hands with her own, Jaime wishes he had knitting-related questions for Brienne.

In a sudden lightbulb moment, Jaime picks up a pen and signs up for Brienne's class for beginner knitters. And because the roster is still quite empty, he signs up Cleos and Addam too.

vi. The one time she didn’t

Overall the class goes well enough. Ygritte is manning the yarn shop, Peck is working at the cafe and Jaime, Addam and other students are seated at the table that is made out of smaller cafe tables. Addam sits next to a tall woman, flirting with her outrageously. Cleos brings coffee drinks to everyone at the table while Brienne demonstrates casting on with insanely large needles and thick yarn. All the students manage to cast on the stitches, although Cleos needs to help Jaime with his.

The atmosphere in the class is full of energy. Brienne is going around the table helping each student, students are chatting with each other, and coffee shop patrons are complaining to Peck about the lack of tables. Jaime manages to knit three stitches before his hand starts to hurt, so instead of knitting he eyes Addam and the tall student -- Dacey -- who are now both flirting with two guys across the table -- Jon and Satin. Cleos is knitting with his tongue sticking out of his mouth. Jaime goes back to knitting so he can make Brienne proud when it’s his turn to be helped by her. He knits the fourth stitch and fifth, but then Cleos needs help because he has run out of stitches to knit.

“It’s alright,” Brienne comes over and puts her hand over Cleos’s shoulder and bends over to look at his knitting. “You just turn your work around and start another row. Well done finishing your row.” Brienne is squeezed between Jaime and Cleos and she smells wonderful. Like tea and meadows in spring and sunrise.

She doesn’t say _well done_ to Jaime, instead she moves directly over to help Addam and Dacey, who are now back flirting with each other.

Later, when the class is over Peck drags the tables and chairs back to their places, cleans up the puddles of coffee everywhere and leaves. Jaime, who doesn’t want to leave, stays behind to hang around in the yarn shop side and watch Brienne closing the till and cleaning up the counter from the clutter that has accumulated there.

“It’s going well, isn’t it?”

“What’s going well, Jaime?” she looks up from her little balls of yarn and paper clips. She still says ‘Jaime’ like she would prefer to say ‘Mr Lannister’.

“The cafe-slash-yarn-shop. It’s going great, isn’t it?”

“Great?” Brienne looks at him with her mouth hanging open.

“Yeah, don’t you think so?”

Something changes in Brienne’s posture. She grows even taller and she presses her lips to a thin line.

“No.”

 _What_? “You don’t like our coffee shop?”

“No.” She stares at Jaime with determination.

“Why? What parts of it you don’t like?”

“It’s all bad! Everyone hates working at coffee shops! The customers are rude, the hours are terrible, the coffee is always shit and full of sugar and the management is clueless! That’s why I want to work in a yarn shop, not a coffee shop. There’s a shit ton of coffee shops in Flea Bottom, but we are the only yarn shop here and we’re the best in town.”

Jaime is not sure what to pick up from that rant, except that Brienne hates his coffee and the management. “You think I’m clueless? It’s the logo, isn’t it? I swear I’m not usually that clueless about Tyrion's jokes.”

“Yes! You are the most clueless and privileged person in the universe, and not just about the logo with the cocks on it. The classroom wasn’t unused, we had classes there every day! We had students queueing to classes for months and now none of the teachers want to teach there. _I_ hate teaching there!”

“Is it because of the coffee incident? I did apologise for that, and it was Cleos’s fault anyway, for upending all those drinks to the table.”

“Everyone’s knitting got drenched in coffee! It was a disaster!”

“But Addam took Dacey to his place for a change of clothes, so it worked out in the end.” Somehow, Addam picking up women at her knitting class wasn’t a positive thing for Brienne, Jaime can see now by the way her eyes were flaming. “It was kind of romantic,” he tries to deflect.

“Romantic? Are you one of these people who thinks coffee shops are romantic?”

“But they are… at least in the stories.” Jaime deflates.

“Only people who never worked in one think they’re romantic.”

“That’s very true, Brienne,” cousin Cleos suddenly remarks from the sofa.

“Crone’s Cunt, Cleos!” Jaime yelps. “How long have you been there? And why _are_ you still here?”

Cleos, who has uncanny ability to be completely unremarkable and un-noticeable until he isn’t, holds up something that looks like a slightly coffee stained scarf.

“Brienne promised to show me how to cast off.” How the fuck has Cleos managed to knit a whole scarf in few hours, Jaime wonders, while Brienne immediately calms down.

“Of course,” she hurries over to sit next to Cleos, their fight forgotten. “To cast off, you knit two stitches…” she starts to explain in a soft and pleasant voice. Something tightens in Jaime’s throat and he throws himself to sit in a comfy armchair in the corner between the knitting books and paper patterns. One of the patterns has a picture of Brienne in her indigo blue Bear island gansey. “Pattern by Brienne Tarth. Best Knitwear designer Ravelry Award winner in years 2017, 2018, 2019” it reads. Jaime rubs his face.

He only looks up when Brienne sits across him to another chair.

“It’s not completely stupid, I’ll give you that,” she sighs. “Knitters are not immune to the charms of caffeine. That’s why we had the espresso machine, to serve coffee in the workshops and classes. And the name and new logo draws in the gay crowd.”

“Why didn’t you tell me the truth?” Jaime asks. “When I asked your opinion about things?”

“Would you have believed me if I had?”

“I would…” Jaime starts to say, but gets interrupted.

“No, you wouldn't have!”

“Shut up, Cleos!” he shouts back. “No, I wouldn’t have.” Brienne’s lips move into a small smile. It feels like the sun is coming out between the clouds. “But I will now. If you let me.”

“What do you mean?”

“We could go to dinner,” he looks at her hopefully. “And you could tell me your ideas about the yarn shop.”

Brienne’s blue eyes start to blink again.

“He’s asking you on a date, Brienne!”

“Yes, thank you Cleos! And can you piss off now?” Jaime shouts back to his cousin.

“I’ll just finish this row first!”

“Alright,” says Brienne. Her cheeks are adorably pink and she is fiddling with her scarf fringe. “We can go to dinner and talk about the shop. But you can’t get angry if I tell you what a pillock you have been.”

“I won't,” says Jaime and gets up. “There’s this awesome Yi Ti place nearby, it’s called Canton Wok. How does that sound?”

He is rewarded with a burst of laughter. She gets up and goes to collect her things.

“Fine, but no more spoonerisms.”

“No promises. Close up, Cleos!” Jaime shouts to his cousin, who is still knitting on the sofa.

“Canton Wok. I don’t get it,” thinks Cleos and starts casting on a sock.

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> Socks and Coffee and Canton Wok… what can I say, I love spoonerisms, they are the lamest jokes ever. My best friend and I have been planning to open a yarn shop and name it Socks and Coffee. 
> 
> The gummy bears with holes in the butt are needle huggers. You stick them at the end of the needles to prevent stitches falling off. [Addi makes some.](https://addineedleshop.com/addi_accessories/needle_huggers.htm)
> 
> I'm immensely grateful for Earthwindandfiber and AuntySocial to betaing this fic and fixing all the errand articles and wrong prepositions. I had so much fun writing this and I would love to know what you think of it. My writing motor runs mainly on kudo and comments.


End file.
